While the United States was panicking about the secret communist conspiracy, the Soviet Union was in the middle of its own panic about a secret cabal of evil conspirators at the very heart of the communist party. Was Joseph Stalin really surrounded by secret fascists? Or did he perhaps have an ulterior motive for accusing his own party members of murder?
Featured image: One of the photographs altered following Stalin’s purge. In the upper photograph (Image source), taken in 1897, Alexander Malchenko is present along with fellow members of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. In the lower photograph (Image source), Malchenko has been edited out after his arrest and execution as a counter-revolutionary.
Sources
- The Moscow Trials
- The Manufacture of Deviance: The Case of the Soviet Purge, 1936-1938
- The Technique of Soviet Interrogation
- Soviet Historiography and the Moscow Trials: After Thirty Years
- The Moscow Trial: Its Meaning and Importance
- August 23 (evening session)
- Leon Trotsky: Why I Agreed to Appear Before the Dies Committee
Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Left Opposition in the USSR 1918-1928
Letter to the Congress
The Ryutin Platform - The Criminal Code of the RSFSR, 1922. June 1, 1922